France Shoots Down Samsung iPhone Ban

By Jeff Gamet

Dec 8th, 2011 11:47 AM EST

Samsung’s fight to win an injunction blocking the sale of Apple’s iPhone in France has failed. The electronics maker had hoped to stop sales of the combination iPod and smartphone in France as part of its patent infringement battle with Apple.

Samsung must pay Apple €100,000 in legal fees as part of the ruling, although Apple’s request for damages was denied because the Paris court ruled the injunction request wasn’t abusive according to Bloomberg.

France to Samsung: No iPhone ban

“I attended large parts of the second court hearing, which took place on November 17 and was the final one prior to today’s ruling, and predicted that Samsung was going to lose with this bid for a France-wide iPhone 4S ban,” said Florian Mueller of Foss Patents. “It became clear that the legal standard for a preliminary injunction is reasonably high in France, and Apple’s lawyers made a number of points that I couldn’t verify in their entirety but which appeared strong enough to dissuade the court from ordering a ban.”

Apple and Samsung have been locked in a legal battle over patent infringement claims for several months with both companies alleging the other’s mobile devices use patented technologies without proper licensing. The companies have filed lawsuits against each other in the U.S. and other countries.

A German court has already issued an injunction blocking the sale of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the country, and the company lost an appeal to overturning that ruling. Apple was also awarded a temporary injunction through a Dutch court blocking the sale of some Galaxy devices in the European Union.

Samsung has been working to block iPhone 4S sales in Australia, Japan, France, and Italy, but decided against seeking an injunction at home in South Korea. “We concluded that we should engage in legal battles with Apple only in the global market, but not in order to gain more market share in Korea,” a Samsung executive said.

So far, Apple has had much better luck winning injunctions that Samsung, but is still facing its own setbacks. Earlier this month, a U.S. Federal Court rejected Apple’s injunction request to block Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales.

As part of her ruling Judge Lucy Koh stated “It is not clear that an injunction on Samsung’s accused devices would prevent Apple from being irreparably harmed.”